The Interaction of OER Use and Course Difficulty on Student Course Grades in a Community College
( OER ) 是取得开放许可的 、 用于教学和学习的材料 , 通常 以低成本或零成本形式提供给学生 。 本研究分析了 OER 使用 ( 源自一项校园零课本费用倡议 ) 与课程难度之间的交互 作用对一所社区大学 35 门不同课程的学生课程成绩产生的影 响 , 并对一系列因素加以控制 , 包括学生性别 、 以往平均学 分绩点 、 和佩尔助学金资格 。 尽管课程难度加大的主要影 响是个别学生成绩下降 , 但 OER 使用和课程难度之间存在显 著交互作用 。 使用 OER 的课程中学生成绩下降率低于未使用 OER 的课程 。 研究发现表明 , 课程难度这一特定情境可能对 理解 OER 采纳效能而言是重要的 。
关键词 : 零课本费用 , 开放教育资源 ( OER ), 课程难度 , 学生成绩
Introduction
A
community college in Virginia , USA , has developed a ZTC degree in which it is possible to complete all coursework for the degree with zero textbook costs . The term ZTC simply emerged from how sections of courses are listed in the course schedule . Some sections of courses require a commercial textbook and some sections of the same courses utilize OER . Sections that use OER are labeled in the schedule with a lowercase “ z ” beside the section number . Because many courses have multiple sections - some which require either commercial textbooks and some which use OER , it is possible to analyze potential differences in outcomes controlling for student attributes and estimating interaction effects with course attributes such as course difficulty . This study was conducted to test such course outcomes and interactions .
Review of Literature
Most college instructors require students in their courses to obtain learning materials ( Seaman & Seaman , 2017 ), and the price of commercial learning materials , particularly textbooks , has increased dramatically in the past few decades ( US Bureau of Labor Statistics , 2016 ). An alternative to expensive commercial materials are Open Educational Resources ( OER ), which include a variety of available learning materials such as textbooks , music , and videos that are licensed without access fees ( Butcher , 2015 ) and are openly licensed for retention , reuse , revision , remixing and redistribution .
The COUP framework ( i . e ., Cost , Outcomes , Usage , and Perceptions ) has been used to evaluate OER (
Bliss et al ., 2013 ). Beyond estimates of costs and savings ( C ), usage ( U ), and perception
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